Posts Tagged ‘nathaniels perpetual motion’

“He has yet to complete a single pushup, though he has been attempting for a while without interruption to perform one from start to finish. Embarrassingly, his arms seem content to maintain an involuntary shuddering motion that only affects the rest of his body along a horizontal plane, rather than aid in accomplishing the task at hand. Is this uncontrollable vibration in fact a perpetual motion, or is it a friction? It resists progression, yet remains ceaselessly frenetic (or so it seems to Nathaniel, who cannot currently conceive of a conclusion to his discomfort and toil).”

2011. Ink on paper. 3.75 x 3.5 in.

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“All the while his pet project (still a work in progress) is playing through the terminal’s speakers. The sounds of double bass, trumpet, and xylophone are completely unrecognizable as they play overlaid but artificially extended chords. The track reaches the point that exceeds the portion Nathaniel has been manipulating, and immediately the playback returns to its native and unaltered tempo. This sudden change of melodic flow steals Nathaniel’s focus from the perceived almost-eternity of wobbly exertion, and he drops limp-armed a few inches down to the ground (his body would have given up right about now even if he hadn’t been distracted by the music).”

2011. Ink on paper. 3.75 x 7 in.

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“He is lying on his stomach again for the second time this evening. To the left of his head is a glob of saliva half-absorbed into the carpet. It fell there from his mouth while his efforts were absorbed in defying the gravity tugging at his entire body – under the circumstances, oral spillage was a necessary concession. Once he stops feeling so weak in the arms, he will get up, find his shit sponge, and clean up the little, watery mess on the floor.”

2011. Ink on paper. 3.5 x 3.75 in.

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This is the fourth and final post of Paul Antony Carr’s 3-month residency in the VerySmallKitchen. This followed on from Paul’s VSK Project here, which presented one aspect of the ongoing EXCERPTS.

Nathaniel’s Perpetual Motion was a new strand of this project, and a series of image-text pairs have appeared on VerySmallKitchen since August. See part one here, part two here, and part three here.

“An individual need only possess a single sponge during the span of his or her lifetime. The sponges neither wear out nor diminish in absorbency. Most of the original models are still in circulation. Nathaniel inherited his from his father, who had previously acquired the sponge from Nathaniel’s grandfather. [ . . . ] The sponge compacts all that it absorbs into its core. Such is its efficiency that the area occupied by the compacted matter gains no measurable increase in volume during the course of a generation. Nathaniel envisions a future in which a sponge passed down a bloodline eventually accumulates, after many centuries, so much human detritus that it collapses into a shit singularity, and ultimately devours whole solar systems.”

2011. Ink on paper. 7 x 7.25 in.

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“The extreme absorbency of these sponges guarantees that they are perpetually sterile. For this reason, it is common practice to both wipe up household messes and clean one’s genital and anal territories using the same sponge.”

2011. Ink on paper. 7.5 x 7 in.

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“Nathaniel recalls his grandfather’s tales of toilet paper use; of how at times one could wipe and wipe and wipe after defecating with no indication of a progression toward cleanliness. Of course nowadays toilet paper has been replaced by superabsorbent synthetic sponges, which leave no trace of solid matter, nor liquid, nor even bacteria, upon their surfaces after wiping.”

2011. Ink on paper. 7 x 7 in.

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This is the third post of Paul Antony Carr’s 3-month residency in the VerySmallKitchen. It follows Paul’s VSK Project here, which presented an aspect of hisEXCERPTS project.

Nathaniel’s Perpetual Motion is a new strand of this project, and a series of image-text pairs have appeared on VerySmallKitchen since August. See part one here and part two here.

“The tune will not loop, but instead continue to play toward its unattainable termination while steadily reducing speed. Nathaniel attempts to achieve this by creating points on the sound file’s timeline and stretching them apart. The first point is a nanosecond from the start of the track. The second point is initially a nanosecond from the first point, but Nathaniel increases this distance to two nanoseconds. The distance continues to increase in ever larger proportions between each successive point. Eventually, there will be a distance between two points that is too long for Nathaniel to comprehend. Nathaniel refers to this as Segment X. Inconceivable is how much greater the length of the subsequent segment is to that of Segment X. Equally inconceivable is how far less the length of the preceding segment is to that of Segment X.”

2011. Ink on paper. 8.5 x 7 in.

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“After wasting several hours working on this musical project, Nathaniel realizes that there is no possibility of ever listening to a completed version of the track. For the music to become infinitely slower as playback progresses, it can never reach its end. To listen to the work in progress would be to listen to something both incomplete and complete at the same time. The unfinished project has not accomplished what is intended of it, and yet it will play to a point of completion. The completed project has attained a goal, a conclusion, but an infinite repetition of technique is required of Nathaniel to enact the proposed design. To declare “done” is to quit the project. In all ways conceivable, the work can never be finished. To listen to it at any stage, no matter how close – or not close – to being what he wants it to be, is indicative of failure.”

2011. Ink on paper. 8.5 x 6.75 in.

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This is the second post of Paul Antony Carr’s 3-month residency in the VerySmallKitchen. It follows Paul’s recent VSK Project here, which presented an aspect of hisEXCERPTS project.

Nathaniel’s Perpetual Motion is a new strand of this project, and a series of image-text pairs will appear on VerySmallKitchen between now and October. See the first post of this residency here.

“Nathaniel awakes early this morning. He sits up on the edge of the bed and looks around his minuscule broom closet of a bedroom. Today he finds himself paying close attention to the unoccupied space of the room’s carpeted floor. Nathaniel recalls once telling a friend that he didn’t need much more living space than the minimum area required for him to do a pushup on the ground. This morning he gets down on all fours beside his bed to test if his current digs meet the criteria set forth by a younger, different Nathaniel. He finds it so happens there is exactly enough space for him to do pushups comfortably. But Nathaniel has never done a pushup in his entire life.”

2011. Ink on paper. 9.5 x 6.25 in.

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“Each additional pushup will expend energy and cause damage to muscle fibre, but will also make Nathaniel a little bit stronger at the same time. If he could endure the fatigue and pain, the accumulation of strength would eventually nullify the unpleasantness of exertion – the more pushups he does, the easier they will become. He could do pushups all night, on his first try, without stopping for a single break. Piece of cake.”

2011. Ink on paper. 6 x 4.25 in.

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“He has been lying on his stomach for the past ten minutes. Feeling dejected, he lifts himself up from floor, and powers up the computer terminal in the wall. He swiftly navigates through a tree of subdirectories and starts up a hidden rudimentary sound editing program that he had discovered just last week. Once the software is running, he opens one of the three sound files contained on the hard drive – this one is a nondescript piece of soft jazz, most likely preloaded for demonstration purposes. Nathaniel begins to edit the timeline of the tune, attempting to slow it down gradually so that it will never play through to its end.”

2011. Ink on paper. 9.5 x 6.75 in.

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This is the first post of Paul Antony Carr’s 3-month residency in the VerySmallKitchen. It follows Paul’s recent VSK Project here, which presented an aspect of hisEXCERPTS project. Nathaniel’s Perpetual Motion is a new strand of this project, and a series of image-text pairs will appear on VerySmallKitchen between now and October.

Connections of language, writing, reading and art practice, inside and outside the VerySmallKitchen. Currently also inhabiting The Ruins of Hastings. Contact David Berridge at verysmallkitchen@gmail.com